I opened his jacket, noticing the empty shoulder-holster, and then unbuttoned the front of his shirt, which was still sticky with his blood, to inspect the wound. It was difficult to tell without seeing him cleaned up a bit, but the entry looked split, as if the knife had been rocked inside him.
'Whoever did it knew how to kill a man with a knife,' I said. 'This looks like a bayonet wound.' I sighed and shook my head. 'I've seen enough. There's no need to put his wife through this, I'll make the formal identification. Does she know yet?'
Nebe shrugged. 'I don't know.' He led the way back through the autopsy-theatre.
'But I expect someone will tell her soon enough.'
The pathologist, a young fellow with a large moustache, had stopped work on the girl's body to have a smoke. The blood from his gloved hand had stained the cigarette paper and there was some of it on his lower lip. Nebe stopped and regarded the scene before him with more than a little distaste.
'Well?' he said angrily. 'Is it another one?'
The pathologist exhaled lazily and pulled a face. 'At this early stage, it certainly looks that way,' he said. 'She's wearing all the right accessories.'
'I see.' It was easily apparent that Nebe didn't much care for the young pathologist. 'I trust your report will be rather more detailed than the last one. Not to mention more accurate.' He turned abruptly and walked quickly away, adding loudly over his shoulder, 'And make sure I have it as soon as possible.'
In Nebe's staff-car, on the way to the Wilhelmstrasse, I asked him what it was all about. 'Back there, in the autopsy-theatre, I mean.'
'My friend,' he said, 'I think that's what you're about to find out.'
The headquarters of Heydrich's SD, the Security Service, at number 102
Wilhelmstrasse, seemed innocuous enough from the outside. Even elegant. At each end of an Ionic colonnade was a square, two-storey gatehouse, and an archway that led into a courtyard behind. A screen of trees made it difficult to see what lay beyond, and only the presence of two sentries told you that here was an official building of some sort.
We drove through the gate, past a neat shrub-lined lawn about the size of a tennis-court, and stopped outside a beautiful, three-storey building with arched windows that were as big as elephants. Stormtroopers jumped to open the car doors and we got out.
The interior wasn't quite what I had expected of Sipo HQ. We waited in a hall, the central feature of which was an ornate gilt staircase, decorated with fully-formed caryatids, and enormous chandeliers. I looked at Nebe, allowing my eyebrows to inform him that I was favourably impressed.
'It's not bad, is it?' he said, and taking me by the arm he led me to the French windows which looked out on to a magnificent landscaped garden. Beyond this, to the west, could be seen the modern outline of Gropius's Europa Haus, while to the north, the southern wing of Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrecht Strasse was clearly visible. I had good reason to recognize it, having once been detained there awhile at Heydrich's order.
At the same time, appreciating the difference between the SD, or Sipo as the Security Service was sometimes called, and the Gestapo was a rather more elusive matter, even for some of the people who worked for these two organizations. As far as I could understand the distinction, it was just like Bockwurst and Frankfurter: they have their special names, but they look and taste exactly the same.
What was easy to perceive was that with this building, the Prinz Albrecht Palais, Heydrich had done very well for himself. Perhaps even better than his putative master, Himmler, who now occupied the building next door to Gestapo headquarters, in what was formerly the Hotel Prinz Albrecht Strasse. There was no doubt that the old hotel, now called S S-Haus, was bigger than the Palais.
But as with sausage, taste is seldom a question of size.
I heard Arthur Nebe's heels click, and looking round I saw that the Reich's crown prince of terror had joined us at the window.
Tall, skeletally thin, his long, pale face lacking expression, like some plaster of Paris death-mask, and his Jack Frost fingers clasped behind his ramrod-straight back, Heydrich stared outside for a moment or two, saying nothing to either of us.
'Come, gentlemen,' he said eventually, 'it's a beautiful day. Let's walk a bit.'
Opening the windows he led the way into the garden, and I noticed how large were his feet and how bandy his legs, as if he had been riding a lot: if the silver Horseman's Badge on his tunic pocket was anything to go by, he probably had.
In the fresh air and sunshine he seemed to become more animated, like some kind of reptile.
'This was the summer house of the first Friedrich Wilhelm,' he said expansively.
'And more recently the Republic used it for important guests such as the King of Egypt, and the British prime minister. Ramsay MacDonald of course, not that idiot with the umbrella. I think it's one of the most beautiful of all the old palaces. I often walk here. This garden connects Sipo with Gestapo headquarters, so it's actually very convenient for me. And it's especially pleasant at this time of year. Do you have a garden, Herr Gunther?'
'No,' I said. 'They've always seemed like a lot of work to me. When I stop work, that's exactly what I do stop work, not start digging in a garden.'
'That's too bad. At my home in Schlactensee we have a fine garden with its own croquet lawn. Are either of you familiar with the game?'
'No,' we said in unison.
'It's an interesting game; I believe it's very popular in England. It provides an interesting metaphor for the new Germany. Laws are merely hoops through which the people must be driven, with varying degrees of force. But there can be no movement without the mallet croquet really is a perfect game for a policeman.'
Nebe nodded thoughtfully, and Heydrich himself seemed pleased with this comparison. He began to talk quite freely. In brief about some of the things he hated Freemasons, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, German Military Secret Intelligence; and at length about some of the things that gave him pleasure the piano and the cello, fencing, his favourite nightclubs and his family.
'The new Germany,' he said, 'is all about arresting the decline of the family, you know, and establishing a national community of blood. Things are changing.
For instance, there are now only 22,787 tramps in Germany, 5,500 fewer than at the start of the year. There are more marriages, more births and half as many divorces. You might well ask me why the family is so important to the Party.
Well, I'll tell you. Children. The better our children, the better the future for Germany. So when something threatens those children, then we had better act quickly.'
I found a cigarette and started to pay attention. It seemed like he was coming to the point at last. We stopped at a park bench and sat down, me between Heydrich and Nebe, the chicken-liver in the black-bread sandwich.
'You don't like gardens,' he said thoughtfully. 'What about children? Do you like them?'
'I like them.'
'Good,' he said. 'It's my own personal opinion that it is essential to like them, doing what we do even the things we must do that are hard because they seem distasteful to us for otherwise we can find no expression for our humanity. Do you understand what I mean?'
I wasn't sure I did, but I nodded anyway.
'May I be frank with you?' he said. 'In confidence?'
'Be my guest.'
'A maniac is loose on the streets of Berlin, Herr Gunther.'
I shrugged. 'Not so as you would notice,' I said.
Heydrich shook his head impatiently.
'No, I don't mean a stormtrooper beating up some old Jew. I mean a murderer.
He's raped and killed and mutilated four young German girls in as many months.'
'I haven't seen anything in the newspapers about it.'
Heydrich laughed. 'The newspapers print what we tell them to print, and there's an embargo on this particular story.'
'Thanks to Streicher and his anti-Semitic rag, it would only get blamed on the Jews,' said Nebe.
'Precisely so,' said Heydrich. 'The last thing I want is an anti-Jewish riot in this city. That sort of thing offends
